My blog is focused primarily on the Theory of Constraints and how to use it to maximize the profitability of any company. I also discuss why integrating TOC with Lean and Six Sigma is the most dynamic improvement methodology available today.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

For the past year I've been working/consulting in a Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul environment for a contractor to both the Army and the Navy. The first engagement in this area was focused on improving the throughput of jet engines in that when an engine was due for service, the contractor had to replace it with a rental engine while the original engine was being maintained, repaired or overhauled. The contractor had to pay for the rental expense if it exceeded the contract limit which it did by a wide margin. I used my customary approach in that we mapped the process in an attempt to identify the system constraint. We actually found two constraints within this process and both of them involved lengthy approval processes with lots of wait time imbedded in them. And while the paperwork was being approved, the cost of the rental engine kept accumulating. It wasn't the engine repair time that caused the extended cycle time problem at all. It was a classic example of policy constraints causing the excessive rental costs. Once these constraints were identified, it was clear what had to be done. So the question became, "Why were the approval process cycle times taking so long?"

I looked at a lot of data, including the email trails, the vehicle to transmit the approval paperwork. What I found was that because the manager responsible for had so many other functions to perform, he would send out his paperwork usually only one day of the week. And when he did so, he sent them out in "batches." The effect of him "batching" the approval paperwork was exactly the same effect as a python trying to swallow a pig! The python can do it, but the process is slow and the pig moves through the python's body at a snail's pace. Yes, it eventually is digested, but it takes much longer than if the python had eaten the pig one bite at a time. Batching encumbers a process by extending the overall cycle time of a process and the approval paperwork process was no exception. So what did we do to "fix" this problem?

I watched the process of entering the data into a database by the engine manager and it was clear that it was a lengthy process for him. It was also clear that by hiring a data entry person, the engine manager could be freed up to perform other important functions. The costs accountants told us that we were not permitted to hire anyone, but that we could run a 3 week study which we did. During that 3 week trial, the approval paperwork jetisoned through the process and the rental engine time and expense decreased significantly. Problem solved....right? I wish it would have been.

The accountants would not approve a permanent slot for data entry because it was too much of an expense! Think about this decision for a minute. If the cost of the rental engine was $75/hour and we were able to reduce the rental engine time from 60 hours to 20 hours.....well you can do the math. In the cost accounting world the focus is on cost savings because they believe that the key to profitability is through saving money. In the TOC world, the key to profitability is through making money! And the key to making money is by increasing the throughput. And the key to increasing throughput is by focusing the improvement effort on the system constraint. But then again, not everyone sees it this way...............

Friday, September 28, 2012

Bruce and I are very happy to share another 5 Star review from an Amazon reader, Deepak Nagar. Many thanks to Deepak for his very kind and instructional words. That is 7 of 7 5 Star reviews from our readers.

Through
Epiphanized, Bob Sproull and Bruce Nelson have empatically sent out a message to
all those who are considering to adopt TLS as their business philosophy
that

- TLS implementation is extremely simple. SIMPLE does not mean easy,
just SIMPLE.

- TOC adoption can be jeopardised if complexity is mixed in
the implementation knowingly or unknowingly. Guard against complexity.

-
Since the possibilities / potential to grow has no limit, there is an element of
faith. Believing is seeing to begin with. The initial results would reveal the
counter intuitive logic of few thumb-rules:

What a surprise it was to meet the new owners of Barton!Conner and Becky certainly surprised us all didn't they?And Joe’s wife having another baby?Who figured that would happen?And then Stan announces that he’s getting married. Yes, Epiphanized
was full of surprises and I’d like to tell you that everyone lived happily ever
after, but as you’ll all find out in the sequel we’ve begun to write, life is
not always as predictable as we’d like it to be.There are twists and turns in everyone’s life
and our sequel is no exception.

One of the things we want to do in our sequel is to move away from the
traditional manufacturing scenario that many of the TOC books you read present
themselves in and move on to areas like service industries and even a look at
the medical field.We’re doing this
because we want to show you that these tools, principles and techniques are not
limited to a manufacturing environment.We will introduce some new tools or at least some tools that we didn’t
weave into the story-line of Epiphanized
and we’ll use these tools in an environment that is not manufacturing which
many of you have requested since reading the first in this series.

Since writing Epiphanized we
have received quite a few good reviews which indicates to us that many of you
liked what we had to offer.There will
be some new characters added to our sequel as the situation arises, but we
won’t forget about Joe, Sam, Connor and Becky.One of the industries we will enter into is Maintenance, Repair and
Overhaul (MRO) and specifically, we’ll probably write about Aviation
Maintenance.

Another area we will explore is the medical field where we’ll
demonstrate how the same tools, principles and techniques we used in Epiphanized will work equally well in
this industry and for that matter, any industry.You’ll see us writing about problems in, for
example, an emergency room and a surgical unit and we’ll weave new characters
into this new story line.In these days
of rising medical costs, we believe we can demonstrate to a whole new audience
that the key to profitability is not through saving money, but rather through
making money.As we demonstrated in Epiphanized, these two approaches are
dramatically different.

We intend to keep the format simple and easy to understand because that’s
what many of the Epiphanized readers
said they liked about it.We don’t
intend to bore you with excessive theory because we want you to be able to read
our work, become epiphanized, and then apply it to your own work scenario.For Bruce and me, it’s all about helping
companies get better and to become more competitive.Making money on a book is not what motivates
either of us.Seeing, or at least
reading about, personal epiphanies is payment enough for us.We all have a responsibility to “give back”
as we live our lives and helping people and companies succeed is our form of
payback.

We’ll keep you informed about the progress of our sequel and we even
welcome suggestions about different industries you’d like to see included or
even improvement tools you’d like us to write about.Our intention is to entertain, but at the
same time we want to educate our readers on how to make dramatic improvements
in very short time periods.These two
are not mutually exclusive!So stay
tuned and as I mentioned before if you have suggestions on things you’d like to
read about, let us know and we’ll make every effort to include them in our
sequel.

In closing, we want to thank everyone for their support of Epiphanized and we look forward to
completing and distributing our next book.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

In my last posting, I told you that Bruce would have a follow-up on getting buy-in for change and here it is.

Getting By-In for a Change

Sometimes getting the necessary buy-in for
the changes you want to make can be a difficult process but, not
impossible.In the TOC Applied Systems
Thinking course (Jonah Course) there is a segment (module) dedicated to this process
which provides some useful guidelines to implement change.

In general, some people tend to resist
someone else’s ideas for change.It
falls under the “not invented here syndrome” and can, at times, be troublesome
to overcome.However, there is also some
simple and powerful psychology involved and if you understand that:

1.Some people have a very powerful intuition in
areas where they have experience.

2.Some people don’t
recognize the need for change.

3.Some people don’t
always understand what needs to be changed or why.

4.Most people want to
feel comfortable that the change is likely to succeed.

5.Most people want to
understand how any change will impact them.

If you take the approach of just presenting
“your idea” it will be a challenging effort to succeed.However, if you ask for and accept input(s)
from others, your ideas will have a much greater probability of success.If you allow other people to modify or even criticize the solution, then ask
them to help make the corrections.In
others words, ask them “What would you do different?”Always
assume the other person has a good point, even if they have not presented it
well.Listen first to understand what
the person means, and not just what they are saying.And by ALL means never make the other person
look bad.You need to always show how
the solution leads to their
benefits, and addresses their
problems.If you give them the
opportunity to help design the solution the chances of their buy-in will be
almost 100%.

While some people
will resist change, in most cases there is at least one person who does not
resist; the person who invented the idea.
First, and foremost, you want to seek
to create ownership of the idea(s) that you want to see implemented. It is not uncommon that the emotion of the
idea’s inventor will provide a very powerful platform to guide other people’s
energy toward supporting an idea.By allowing
other people to modify your ideas, you create a situation where the solution(s)
can become other people’s idea(s), and not just yours.In essence, you have enacted the “Socratic
method” that allows others to participate.What
is very important at this stage is, don’t
rush to reveal your answer, always allow the person time to digest your ideas
and reach the same conclusions on their own.When the “new” idea becomes “their” idea you have successfully used the
Socratic Method to create the necessary ownership.When other people own the idea (solution)
they will most likely make it happen in short order.

Logic can be one of
the most powerful tools we use to gain a consensus for ideas.Logic, both necessity and sufficiency, can be
used to show how something systematically will help to solve a problem, reach
an objective, or overcome an obstacle. As
powerful as logic is, emotions are even more powerful.When provoked and pushed to the limits,
emotional resistance will block even the most solid logic.Emotional Resistance to a good idea can come
in many forms but, the two most prevalent are:

1. Showing the person responsible he is wrong.
(making him or her look bad)

2. Acting as if your solution is the
answer to the world’s problems.(It’s probably not, so don’t pretend that it is.)

3. Let it be the
others person’s idea … it’s OK!

The
scenario that you really want to end up with is a situation where you can help
others to recognize the existence of the problem and/or the need to change.The starting position CANNOT be one of “you”
against “them”, but rather strive for a position of “you” and “them” against the problem – not against each other.If you approach it in this manner, you will enable
others to see a way out of the problem or a solution for the problem.A solution developed, with others, is a
solution that leads to everyone’s benefits, in essence, the WIN-WIN.Remember: there is no useful solution except
for the WIN-WIN.Anything else is just a
win-lose.

In your desire to
implement change you will likely encounter some other categories of people.Through time we have narrowed these down to
three (3) categories.These categories
are not based on job functions or organizational titles.These categories of people can exist anywhere
up and down the organizational chain.It
is highly probable that once you understand these categories, you will know
instantly when you run into one of them.

The three
categories are:

1. Directly
Responsible Person (DRP)

The type of person is affectionately known as the
D-R-P.This is the person who is tasked
with responsibility of the core problem, or the area that you are considering
for change.They very clearly understand
the subject matter.They are also
extremely sensitive to (and very often tired of) being blamed for ALL the
problems.What this type of person wants
more than anything is – a way out of the problem.These types of people usually suffer from a
martyr complex and will feel directly attacked even if they aren’t directly
responsible.

2. .Intimately Involved Person (IIP)

The IIP clearly understands the environment where
change is needed.It is possible this person
is the next level up in the organizational chain.It is also possible that they exist in areas
outside of the organization.If
correctly situated in the organization the IIP can be very important for
gaining consensus for your new ideas and change.They are a great person to have on your team.

3.Outside Person (OP)

The outside person is usually totally unconcerned/unaware
of Undesirable Effects (UDEs) that exist.They usually sit at the higher level of the organization structure and
perhaps even at a Corporate level.They
are for the most part disconnected with the realities of the lower
organizational structure.The connection
between necessary actions and the implied benefits usually isn’t obvious to
them.However, it is highly probable
that you will need their cooperation for the intended solution.

By understanding
and looking for these three categories of people you can learn to temper your
buy-in approach, either up or down, in order to get the buy-in and consensus
you need.Good luck with your approach.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

In my posting today, we are
privileged to have Bruce Nelson writing for us.In this posting Bruce discusses the concept of change….and maybe more
correctly, necessary change.

Is Change Really
Necessary?

Bruce
Nelson

I guess the honest answer to that question
is: “it depends.”It depends if the
change you are making is really necessary, or are you just changing things
because you can?It depends if the
change is associated with a systems constraint, or is the change a
non-constraint?

Let’s talk about “unnecessary change”
first.Sometimes change just for the
sake of change can have destructive outcomes no matter how good the intentions
are.Unnecessary change is most commonly
associated with organizations that are working in isolation of each other with
no real “focus” on the overall goal of the company.Each individual organization has determined
some pre-defined goal(s) that they want to accomplish and they set out to do
so.Sometimes they do this without any
real understanding of the overall systems affects that the proposed change
might have on another organization.As
an example, suppose a sales organization wants to increase sales without a
concrete understanding of the internal capacity of the manufacturing
organization.More sales without the
necessary capacity will be very destructive to the manufacturing organization.There will be increased late orders, longer
lead times and unhappy customers.So, an
improvement in one organization can have a very destructive effect on another
organization.What started out with good
intentions quickly became a big problem for the entire company.

Now let’s talk about necessary change.Any change that can move the company closer
to its overall goal (make money) is probably a very good change to make.Any recommended changes brought forward can
be evaluated with a quick and effective litmus test.Ask yourself, “If I make this change will
throughput (T) go up?”You can also ask
“Will operating expense (OE) stay the same, or go down?”Or, “Will inventory/investment stay the same
or go down?”If the answer to any of
these questions is “NO”, then it is probably not a good or necessary change
make and should be shelved until another time.

However, making necessary changes does
require some accurate information.First,
you must know where the systems constraint currently resides.Second, is accurate (probable) information
about where the constraint will move next?If the system constraint limits the system output, then any improvement
of the constraint will improve throughput through the system.The first litmus test has been passed!If you spend your time and resources
“focused” on anything except the constraint, you will miss the opportunity for
maximum “leverage.”

If you also have a good idea where the
constraint will move next, then the necessary planning can be undertaken to
deal with the next constraint.This
sequence of finding and fixing is exactly the same as the “Piping Diagram” that
has been referred to so many times on this blog.Find and fix the first constraint and move to
the next one.This sequence allows you
to make the necessary improvement because you “must” and not just because you
“can.”

I want to thank Bruce for writing this thought provoking piece. In our next posting Bruce will write a follow-up segment on change buy-in.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

This morning I
received a response about Bruce and my new book Epiphanized that I just had to share with
you.This type of response is the real reason
Bruce and I wrote this book in the first place…..to get the message out to help
people and Connie’s response tells us that it did. Bruce and I are grateful to people like Connie who are compelled to share their feelings about something new that they read and learned. Here is the dialogue I had with Connie this morning.

Date: 9/22/2012

Subject: RE:RE:Our new book is finally ready as an
ebook!!

Hi Bob,

I just finished Chapter 5 and I want you to know the book has moved me to
tears...that's a good thing! I now know how to better articulate the
constraints we face inside the technical training department to senior
management. Although ours' is a transactional-based value stream, the premise
is the same: inputs-process-outputs. In a nutshell: Constraints based on
curriculum (input) adversely impact our ability to effectively train
(process) our maintenance technicians to ensure they remain current in their
knowledge & skills (output).

Ever heard of scenario based training? Your book is the epitome of it! The
story you weave, in concert with tool application works extremely well for
me...you have "made the complex simple."

I then asked Connie if she would permit me to post her
comments on my blog and here was her reply.

Subject: RE:RE:RE:Our new book is finally ready as
an ebook!!

Absolutely, Bob. I've already
posted a version of it on LI & FB. Tweeted about it, too. Reviewed it in
Apple iBook but not sure it "took." iPads can be fickle...

Got to get the message out! I'm still tearing up, this book, its message and
tools have enabled me to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Suggest that
you adapt this book for a transactional scenario ;)

Connie

Thank
you Connie for your kind words and enthusiastic support of our book!

Thursday, September 20, 2012

So far, Bruce and my book, Epiphanized: Integrating Theory of
Constraints, Lean and Six Sigma has had six reviews posted on Amazon. The following are those reviews and the reviewers rating (1 to 5 Stars). Bruce and
I are grateful for all of the reviewers kind words.

Philip Marris Paris, France – Rating 5 Stars

At last a book that correctly presents the
three main industrial performance improvement approaches - TOC, Lean and Six
Sigma - explaining why if you use a combination of the 3 you will have a system
that will enable you to improve much faster and reach higher levels of
performance.

The book has a "business novel" format very similar to the The Goal
by Eliyahu Goldratt. Everything moves very fast; changes happen on a day to day
basis because that is what TLS enables. As a result it has a "hard to put
down" edge to it you will not find in other books.

I think this book is going to have a very significant impact on industry.

Philip Marris

Marris Consulting, Paris, France

Alpha22222 – Rating 5 Stars

Excellent book. Broken into two books in one.
It helps better calrify the Thinking Processes.
Although there are several typos, they don't take away from the rich content.
This book should be read by the incoming freshman at Harvard Business School.
It is already recommended as a reading requirement to be used in conjunction
with Lean/Six Sigma Black Belt courses.

Dennis Godwin – Rating 5 Stars

For most CPI Practitioners, their entire
apprenticeship is like drinking from a fire hose. We've all been there. We're
trying to learn the ins and outs of Measurement Systems Analysis while
contending with planning team meetings. Or, maybe we're dealing with some
change management issues with senior leadership while learning an appropriate
approach to piloting the new process. All of this at a time when we are still
sort of unsure of ourselves. All these matters combine to make one big firehose
to drink from in addition to the one you've been drinking from in a classroom.
This is why Bob's and Bruce's book shines.

They remove the pesky fire hose by immersing you in a set of brilliantly
developed, but familiar characters and a stream of familiar situations. With
all of this familiarity, you're left to learn only one thing: a very simple,
yet oh so powerful approach to applying the 3 disciplines of lean, six sigma,
and the theory of constraints together.

To sweeten the pot even more, when I was caught off guard with new terminology
or concepts, the brilliant addition of the appendices in the back of the book
turned my entire experience into a full service classroom complete with text
book in hand. Hmmm.... A classroom that I can't put down! Masterful!

"Epiphanized" properly emphasizes
the focus and leverage that Theory of Constraints (TOC) adds to Lean Six Sigma
(LSS) disciplines.

Bob Sproull and Bruce Nelson have crafted a business novel and reference book,
in one, to make the power of TLS (TOC Lean Sigma) understandable and accessible
to anyone in business.

I highly recommend this easy read/reference to C-suite executives, operations
managers and LSS Black Belts, alike. You can read this book without having ever
read "The Goal" - i.e. one of "The 100 Best Business Books of
All Time" and one of only eleven in the "Management" category.

You will gain fresh perspective and important understandings about the
Operational Excellence contributions readily available through Constraints
Management, Throughput Accounting, Critical Chain Project Management and the
TOC Thinking Processes.

In all likelihood, your personal epiphany will have you wanting to share with
colleagues and to learn more yourself, just like the characters in the novel.
Fortunately, all you'll need to do is "Google" to find a wealth of
additional reading and other resource options.

CAUTION: You might develop a fancy for red wines made with 80% or more
Sangiovese grapes from Tuscany.

I
recommend this business novel to every curious and enthusiast spirit, whether
or not they've read The Goal before.

In my humble opinion, this piece of work is a remarkable contribution to the
continuous improvement field. Compared to The Goal for applying TOC, I think
this business novel gave more clues about how to apply the principles of TLS.
The appendix for instance was a very valuable complement, and I surely
appreciated it. My interpretation is The Goal was more meant to be a teaser,
whereas Epiphanized focused both on convincing AND giving a more concrete
toolbox to every reader; and I believe Bob and Bruce succeeded very well on
this, Bravo !

Monday, September 17, 2012

For everyone who has emailed Bruce and I about when Epiphanized will be available as an e-book, that day has finally come. Here are the links where it can be purchased from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Apple:

Friday, September 14, 2012

I just finished a rather
intense, 3 ½ day improvement initiative at a medical facility and I wanted to
share what we did with everyone.If you’ve
ever had to use a hospital emergency room and one that ultimately resulted in
you being admitted to the hospital, then this blog posting might be of interest
to you.This posting is especially
relevant today because of rising healthcare costs and the impending Affordable
Care Act which will go into effect in 2014.

When we arrived at this
hospital complex a cross-functional team had been assemble and a project
charter had been assembled.The team
consisted of Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) from each of the major disciplines
throughout the hospital and as you know from my previous postings, the use of
SME’s is critical to the successful outcome of any improvement
initiatives.The SME’s represent the
driving force behind each of the individual process steps simply because they
live in it daily and are responsible for making it work.When we started this improvement initiative,
one of the first actions we accomplished was to take what we call a Team Pulse Survey (TPS) which tells us
something about the mood of the team in place.Figure 1 is an example of a TPS.

Figure
1

The TPS is intended to
determine the mood of the team in terms of whether or not they believed they
would or would not be empowered to make needed changes and just how difficult
the project would be to complete.As you
can see, most of the team members believed that the project would be difficult
to accomplish and that they would not be empowered to accomplish the goal of
the project.

The problem statement for
this team was that it was taking much too long to actually admit a patient into
the hospital once the doctor determined the need to admit the patient.When we started this initiative, the average
time for the patient to actually leave the emergency department and be admitted
into a hospital ward was around 4 hours.The general consensus of the hospital leadership was that this time
needed to be cut in half to 2 hours.I
got the sense that this team didn’t have much confidence that they could reach
this goal and the TPS results seemed to confirm this feeling.

We walked the team through
the development of a SIPOC and a Current State process map identifying all of
the steps currently in place which included things like departmental hand-offs,
communications, phone calls, faxes, etc. that exist in today’s process.This, by itself, was an eye-opener for all of
the team members.The team had no idea
that all of these actions needed to occur just to be able to admit a
patient.One of the by-products of this
exercise was that the team members gained a new appreciation and respect for
each other’s roles.The process map
confirmed that there were nearly 90 individual process stapes that made up the
current 4 hour delay in admittance.

Our next step was to color
code each step as either green (value-added), yellow
(non-value-added-but-necessary), or red (non-value-added) directly on the
current state map.We explained to the
team that if we could eliminate the “red” items, we could then reduce the
amount of waste in the process.Once we
had completed this exercise, the team receptivity level clearly improved and
they began to see that perhaps their goal could be achieved after all.

We then created an Ideal
State Map which demonstrated the ideal process or the high level actions that
make up the admitting process and then a future state process map.This future state map cemented in the team’s
mind that their goal was achievable.I
then presented a brief training session on the Theory of Constraints (TOC) and
explained that unless and until we identified the system constraint and then
exploit it, our reduction targets wouldn’t be met.The team determined that the system
constraint was the time required to clean the room before a patient could be
admitted.It was clear to everyone that
we needed to reduce this time by at least 50% if we were to achieve our overall
50% reduction in admittance time.The
team struggled with this and actually told me that it was not possible to
reduce the cleaning and prep time.I, of
course, strongly disagreed with them which turned their heads!I asked them to explain their current
procedure for cleaning and they told me that one cleaner was assigned to clean
the bed area and the bathroom.I simply
asked them why they couldn’t use two cleaners instead of one.They responded and told me that they were not
authorized to hire any additional workers.I just laughed and explained that I found it difficult to believe that
all of their cleaning staff was busy 100% of the time and besides, the ER
patients must be the priority.There was
an epiphany that took place!They all
saw the power of using Goldratt’s 5 Focusing Steps and the problem was solved.

The point of this blog was
to demonstrate that even though TOC was initially designed to work in a
manufacturing environment, it works equally well in any environment.If there is a defined process, TOC, used in
conjunction with Lean and Six Sigma, will always result in improvement.

So what was the final
result?The original 240 minute delay
was reduced to around 70 minutes which clearly exceeded everyone’s expectations.The number of steps reduced from 90 to 40+, no
money spent, no additional manpower required, just a team of SME’s working
together to solve a problem using an integrated Lean, Six Sigma and TOC
methodology!And what about the team
pulse survey?The opinions now by nearly
everyone were that they were empowered and that the goal could be easily
achieved.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

In today’s blog posting I
want to talk about a very powerful technique I refer to as Active Listening.This
posting is directed at companies where the workforce morale is not good and for
all of those companies who need a rapid improvement in throughput.I’ve been using this “technique” for the last
ten years and every time I do, rapid improvement in throughput has happened.

Many companies today praise
themselves for how well they “involve” their workforce in their improvement
efforts.In fact, if you go into many
companies you’ll probably see a wall of pictures that support the contention
that “our people are involved.”And
although I love seeing this “gallery of involvement photos,” many times they
are just photos.So the question
becomes, just how involved are the subject matter experts (SME’s) within your
company?This depends on what your
definition of involved really is and who you believe are your SME’s.Involvement in many companies is simply
participation on improvement teams.But
in my mind, simply participating on a team is not enough to generate
significant improvement.Why not?I think the best way to answer this question
is through a simple case study based upon a consulting engagement that I was fortunate
enough to lead.

This company was in the
Aviation MRO (i.e. Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul) industry and was a
contractor to the Department of Defense (DoD).This company, by contract, was required to supply a pre-determined
number of aircraft every day and if they didn’t, they were assessed a
significant financial penalty based upon the number of aircraft that they
failed to deliver.This company was struggling
to meet demand and the results were getting worse.So much so, the corporate office replaced the
site leader in hopes of turning this company around.In addition to the financial losses for
missed aircraft availability, this company was paying a huge amount of money on
mandatory maintenance overtime in an attempt to “right the ship” so to speak.One of the consequences of this mandatory
overtime, which I might add had been in place for months prior to my arrival,
was extremely low workforce morale.The
more overtime the maintenance workforce was mandated to work, the lower the
morale became.Call-in’s and absenteeism
were high as well which were directly the result of this constant overtime.

Upon arriving to this site,
I met with the new site leader to discuss his issues and it was clear to me
that he was frustrated.And while the
out-going leader’s management style was command and control (i.e. do it my
way!!), the new leader believed in listening to fresh new ideas.I asked him if he was ready to involve his
people and he replied that they already did.I asked him who his SME’s were and he gave me a list of technical people
(i.e. engineers, supervisors, etc.) on site.I then responded with, “So these are the people that physically maintain
the aircraft?”His response was, “Well
no, but they are the experts.”I just
smiled back and said, “No they aren’t.”I explained to him that the true SME’s are the people that maintain the
aircraft…..the mechanics, the avionic’s techs, the QA folks, the maintenance
control people, the flight-line workers and logistics workers.The look on his face was priceless….like he
had just had an epiphany of sorts.I
then explained my version of employee involvement…..Active Listening.

I told him that if he wanted
to rapidly turn-around his results, the first thing he needed to do was form a
team comprised of only SME’s.This team needed to be made up of all of the maintenance related disciplines,
but that membership needed to be completely voluntary and wherever possible, it
needed to be the informal leaders of the workforce(I might add that this was a union
environment).I then explained the
central concept of Active Listening which is, the managers would not only
listen to the core team’s ideas, but as long as their solutions didn’t violate
any customer or company policies, they needed to be implemented exactly as
stated by this core team.I further
explained that this would be difficult, if not impossible, for some of his
managers and supervisors to do, but that it was absolutely necessary.The site leader’s response was very positive.

Several days later we had
our first core team meeting.We mapped
the maintenance process first to make certain that everyone understood exactly
how it was working.This was a valuable
learning experience for some of the team members because they got to see
firsthand how their work impacted the flow of aircraft through the maintenance
process.I then presented the basics of
the Theory of Constraints to this core team and, without exception, everyone
understood.As a team we identified the
system constraint to be all of the actions required to be completed (e.g.
approvals) before maintenance work could begin on the aircraft. I then gave them training on the Interference
Diagram (I’ve written about the ID on a past posting) and asked the group for
solutions to each of the interferences they had identified.There was skepticism that management would
implement their solutions, but the site leader assured them that their ideas
and solutions would be implemented exactly as presented.As this first meeting ended, we asked the
members to go solicit additional ideas from their co-workers.

To make a long story short,
the ideas came from everywhere and most of them were implemented exactly as
stated.The core team itself was
responsible for deciding which shop floor ideas would or would not be
implemented.You could see the workforce
morale changing…..improving and growing.We met with this team twice a week and began a brief newsletter of sorts
to communicate the actions of the core team.The results came swiftly and within 2-3 weeks, aircraft availability
targets were being consistently met. In 3-4 weeks, all mandatory overtime was
stopped.The workforce morale jettisoned
upward and availability targets were met at an even better rate…..all of this
because of Active Listening, the identification of the system constraint and
focusing our improvement efforts (the core team’s solutions) directly on it.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Recently I've been getting a lot of emails about how to use and Interference Diagram in a process improvement initiative. Back in May of this year, I wrote a blog posting on this very subject for my company's blog (i.e. NOVACES' Blog) so I thought I would share it with you. Hope you enjoy it and that it answers the questions I have been getting.

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Today I want to give you a link to my company's (NOVACES) blog postings where I also contribute. The link below is a link to a posting I wrote about a different way to use the Intermediate Objectives Map. I use this when I don't have time to do a full Thinking Process analysis.

About Me

Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt - TOC Jonah - author of three books: Epiphanized: Integrating Theory of Constraints, Lean and Six Sigma - The Ultimate Improvement Cycle - Maximizing Profits Through the Integration of Lean, Six Sigma and the Theory of Constraints, Process Problem Solving - A Guide for Maintenance and Operation's Teams - New book, Epiphanized has beeen released in January 2012.